[DeTomaso] vacaville fires
Mike Drew
MikeLDrew at aol.com
Sat Aug 22 00:17:15 EDT 2020
AJ,
Yes, still have the Cobra. The engine is sitting on the ground in front of it. It is all ready to go back in and was supposed to be installed in March, but then I got the Covid19 and that set me back, then everybody went into lockdown. So it was going to burn. Thankfully it didn’t!
Once the Covid19 thing is behind us hopefully I can coax some friends over to help install it. I had been relying on ‘cheap foreign labor’ (my POCA buddy from France who was visiting once a month while on airline layovers) but of course now there is no longer any transatlantic flying.....
Mike
Sent from my iPad
> On Aug 21, 2020, at 20:41, Asa Jay Laughton via DeTomaso <detomaso at server.detomasolist.com> wrote:
>
> Mike,
> I didn't see a mention of the Shelby Cobra. Do you still own that?
> Asa Jay
> Asa Jay Laughton - W7TSC, MSgt, USAFR, Retired
> Spokane County ARES-RACES-ACS EC/RO
> ******************************
> [1]https://w7tsc.org
> [2]https://www.teampanteraracing.com
>
> On 8/21/2020 18:05, Dennis Valdez via DeTomaso wrote:
>
> Wow Mike, what a whirlwind of activity for you! I'm glad you're out of
> harms way for the time being at least.
> We are about .87 miles from the SCU Lightning complex evacuation area
> here in San Jose. So far Cal Fire says its about 10% contained and
> holding steady, and the fire is spreading south and east away from
> town. We are ready with a plan if things change though. Things would
> get interesting if I start seeing flames coming over the hills to the
> east of our house.
> Stay safe everyone!
> Dennis
>
> Wow Mike, what a whirlwind of activity for you! I'm glad you're out of
> harms way for the time being at least.
> We are about .87 miles from the SCU Lightning complex evacuation area
> here in San Jose. So far Cal Fire says its about 10% contained and
> holding steady, and the fire is spreading south and east away from
> town. We are ready with a plan if things change though. Things would
> get interesting if I start seeing flames coming over the hills to the
> east of our house.
> Stay safe everyone!
> Dennis
> On Friday, August 21, 2020, 01:26:32 PM PDT, Mike Drew via DeTomaso
> [3]<detomaso at server.detomasolist.com> wrote:
> On Aug 21, 2020, at 10:55, Jeff Detrich [4]<[1]jjdetrich at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Just checking to be sure you are safe. Seems like you are
> surrounded by
> fires again.
> Thanks Jeff! Yes, it's been an interesting time.
> I was slated to fly to Maine then Germany on Wednesday night, enroute
> to Afghanistan. It was going to be a 24-hour day so I endeavored to
> shift my body clock to the right by staying up until the wee hours
> Tuesday night with the intent of sleeping until after noon Wednesday.
> I was aware there was a small fire burning in a remote canyon about a
> half hour drove north of me, and was utterly unconcerned. Around 1 am
> Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I got a text from Lori's son (who is
> an
> Oakland PD officer) that his wife (who is El Dorado County Sheriff,
> working in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe) had been alerted that they
> might be needed as the fire was growing.
> Since I was looking for ways to keep entertained anyway, I decided to
> go for a drive up to the top of a range of hills near my house,
> heading
> initially north then west, with the idea that I could look down into
> the valley and look to the north and perhaps see something. I was
> shocked as I approached the hill to start to climb and could see the
> fire glow much closer than I expected! As I started to climb the
> hill,
> in a narrow road with thick brush and vegetation on each side, I
> encountered a sheriff driving down the hill, stopping and alerting
> residents for the need to evacuate. So, I turned around!
> At the bottom of the hill I turned north on English Hills road and
> entered that area, which has homes set on (typically) 5-acre
> properties. I drove in for a mile or so and saw flames.
> Ah.
> Time to go home and start packing!
> I zoomed home, then phoned several neighbors and alerted them. Both
> our
> Panteras were In the garage, but Lori had just left to visit her son
> and family in Riverside (southern california) so I was on my own.
> Ashes were already falling. This is Lori's race Mustang at 230 am:
> [[5]cid:4F18CC19-2334-43E7-92B6-B9FC19AD1B94]
> I made the executive decision that my Pantera would be my getaway
> car.
> We have psychologically prepared ourselves for eventualities such as
> earthquake and fire, and have a checklist taped to the garage door
> listing all the items we need to grab to escape, depending on the
> circumstances. So it was very straightforward to scoop up all our
> guns
> (which are physically small, have high value relative to their size,
> are not covered by insurance, are difficult to replace, and are also
> awesome) and fill the rear trunk, then grab important papers,
> passports, computers, hard drives, a 10-inch Campagnolo wheel (I
> still
> haven't replaced the cracked one on my car although it's holding air
> just fine), and a few days worth of clothes, toiletries etc. so I was
> ready to go fairly quickly.
> I was then standing in the street at 5 am chatting with neighbors.
> One
> agreed to follow me so I could drive Lori's Pantera to our storage
> unit
> which is all-metal and built alongside a small airport, so no
> buildings
> or vegetation nearby ,and it has sprinklers inside the units. I
> figured
> that was pretty safe.
> Then later in the morning I loaded motorcycles in Lori's truck and
> drove it to a church a mile away which has an expansive parking lot
> with relatively little vegetation. My friend then shuttled me back
> and
> forth and I was able to get three VW Sciroccos and Lori's race
> Mustang
> there. Everything in this photo is ours except for my friend's white
> truck:
> [[6]cid:7EF04395-E5C4-42E7-BB86-B197606B8C9D]
> Now I was all ready to go. By happy fortune, a few weeks earlier my
> GT350 had been hauled to a Mustang specialist in Medford OR for final
> fettling, a Scirocco was at a shop in Sacramento, and one of my
> motorcycles at another shop near the San Francisco airport, and
> Lori's
> Minivan is parked at the airport. So even if all the remotely parked
> cars burned up we would still have too many cars. :)
> A mandatory evacuation notice came down for the neighborhood between
> us
> and the hills, and people cleared out. Later that notice was
> extended
> to us, but I elected to stay along with about half my neighbors.
> Around
> 230 in the afternoon the fire finally crested the nearest hills and
> began advancing on us:
> [[7]cid:DC23A9AD-13FC-4B68-BB0D-67BFA9BECC31]
> It's difficult ti make out, but the top of the hills is already
> burned
> away, while the bottom has dead grass, and there is a low wall of
> fire
> advancing down the hill at a pretty good clip. It would reach the
> first
> neighborhood and if houses started going up in flames, at that point
> I
> was going to bug out.
> There were no fire fighting forces trying to stop its advance. You
> can't see it well, but there is a lone house at the top of the hill
> to
> the left of the smoke pyre. Firefighters made a stand there and
> surrounded it and protected it, and it survived. The smoke pyre is
> his
> next door neighbor's house burning. In fact the entire canyon on the
> back side of those hills went up in smoke and many dozens of homes
> were
> lost.
> Without warning, suddenly the wind shifted and started blowing
> towards
> the hills, and the entire fire just went out! By 3 pm there was just
> smoke. The fire instead moved south towards Fairfield and picked up a
> lot of steam, and crossed interstate 80.
> I had already told the Air Force I wouldn't be flying to Afghanistan
> that evening because I needed to take care of business at home, so
> they
> slipped the mission 24 hours for me. Later a decision was made to
> waive all rules about pre-mission crew rest and just call crewmembers
> and evacuate planes and people from Travis AFB, a hilariously
> childish
> reaction since there was no way the flames could ever damage the
> planes, parked in acres of concrete with no combustibles nearby. So
> the
> rest of my crew, plus a substitute for me, split to San Antonio that
> night, then Germany yesterday and today are enroute to Afghanistan.
> I finally went to bed around 11 pm Wednesday, having been awake since
> early Tuesday morning. Thursday I got up and saw the smoke was so
> thick
> the hills weren't visible.
> Yesterday afternoon a guy flew a drone from the neighborhood at the
> edge of town, out towards English Hills, where I had been on the
> first
> night. Here is a screen grab from where the video starts and ends,
> with my house in the distance circled:
> [[8]cid:FE31AD4A-AE7A-4D89-8C1E-94631F43EE19-L0-001]
> The video shows the utter destruction to the north, and west:
> [1][2][9]https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> I am now about to start fetching my cars and motorcycles home. The
> danger has passed for me, even as the fire continues to grow and move
> off to the north and west. They are reporting 105 homes destroyed in
> `my' fire but I think the true number is substantially higher. The
> fire
> hit areas that were comprised mainly of estates, and there was one
> guy
> I know of who lost 13 classic Corvettes. There is a car flipper in
> English hills who had a Pantera for sale last week. His house is
> right
> in the edge if the fire line so he was either saved by inches or lost
> everything by inches. I haven't heard yet.
> Additional fires have sprouted up south of San Francisco and are
> becoming the bigger story. Several Pantera owners have successfully
> moved their cars to safety and evacuated, and I know of no losses
> there
> yet.
> A true blessing is the fact that winds were very mild all week. If it
> had been really windy, as it was when the Paradise fire happened a
> couple of years ago, it likely would have burned from here to Las
> Vegas!
> Here is a good news article with links to videos, etc:
>
> [2][3][10]https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wil
> dfi
> re-threatens-over-homes-Winters-15495663.php
> Thanks for asking, Jeff!
> Mike
> References
> 1. [4][11]https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 2.
> [5][12]https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfi
> re-threatens-over-homes-Winters-15495663.php
> _______________________________________________
> Detomaso Email List is not managed by POCA
> Posted emails must not exceed 1.5 Megabytes
> DeTomaso mailing list
> [[13]6]DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> [7][14]http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
> To manage your subscription (change email address, unsubscribe, etc.)
> use the links above.
> Members who post to this list grant license to the list to forward any
> message posted here to all past, current, or future members of the
> list. They also grant the list owner permission to maintain an archive
> or approve the archiving of list messages.
>
> References
>
> 1. [15]mailto:jjdetrich at gmail.com
> 2. [16]https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 3. [17]https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfi
> 4. [18]https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 5. [19]https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfire
> -threatens-over-homes-Winters-15495663.php
> 6. [20]mailto:DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> 7. [21]http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Detomaso Email List is not managed by POCA
> Posted emails must not exceed 1.5 Megabytes
> DeTomaso mailing list
> [22]DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> [23]http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
>
> To manage your subscription (change email address, unsubscribe, etc.) use the li
> nks above.
>
> Members who post to this list grant license to the list to forward any message p
> osted here to all past, current, or future members of the list. They also grant
> the list owner permission to maintain an archive or approve the archiving of lis
> t messages.
>
> References
>
> 1. https://w7tsc.org/
> 2. https://www.teampanteraracing.com/
> 3. mailto:detomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> 4. mailto:[1]jjdetrich at gmail.com
> 5. cid:4F18CC19-2334-43E7-92B6-B9FC19AD1B94
> 6. cid:7EF04395-E5C4-42E7-BB86-B197606B8C9D
> 7. cid:DC23A9AD-13FC-4B68-BB0D-67BFA9BECC31
> 8. cid:FE31AD4A-AE7A-4D89-8C1E-94631F43EE19-L0-001
> 9. https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 10. https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wil
> 11. https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 12. https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfi
> 13. mailto:6]DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> 14. http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
> 15. mailto:jjdetrich at gmail.com
> 16. https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 17. https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfi
> 18. https://youtu.be/JQSDJwMOefo
> 19. https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Vacaville-wildfire-threatens-over-homes-Winters-15495663.php
> 20. mailto:DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> 21. http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
> 22. mailto:DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> 23. http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Detomaso Email List is not managed by POCA
> Posted emails must not exceed 1.5 Megabytes
> DeTomaso mailing list
> DeTomaso at server.detomasolist.com
> http://server.detomasolist.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
>
> To manage your subscription (change email address, unsubscribe, etc.) use the links above.
>
> Members who post to this list grant license to the list to forward any message posted here to all past, current, or future members of the list. They also grant the list owner permission to maintain an archive or approve the archiving of list messages.
More information about the DeTomaso
mailing list